Frost & Sullivan recently researched the North American manufacturing Industry 4.0 and digital transformation analytics market and, based on its findings, recognizes Northwest Analytics (NWA) with the 2022 North American Manufacturing Industry 4.0 and Digital Transformation Analytics Technology Innovation Leadership Award. The company provides global manufacturers with industrial analytics-based knowledge solutions, spanning nearly every industrial vertical. NWA’s innovative solutions address some of the most critical operational challenges that manufacturers face. With over four decades of experience, NWA continues to help manufacturers identify, codify, and amplify their process data utilizing easy-to-use and easy-to-understand solutions. The company pioneered the transition to operationalized real-time analytics and obtain valuable insights into the manufacturing process based on multiple analytics approaches, positioning itself as the go-to vendor for manufacturing analytics.

NWA’s Analytics Knowledge Suite prevents institutional knowledge loss, reduces skills gaps, and improves new hires’ time to productivity. The solution identifies early warning process signals, codifies institutional knowledge, and amplifies the analytics-based process knowledge across the enterprise, making it accessible for immediate and consistent issue resolution. In addition, the solution retains relevant information generated from responding to analytics signals, capturing all knowledge related to issue resolution and making it available throughout the enterprise, to solve issues faster. The innovative industrial analytics solution enables multiple analytics methodologies and uses a prescriptive approach to help users respond to challenges and issues with specific actions. NWA’s Focus EMI® provides real-time process notifications and role-based visualizations based on native univariate and multivariate analytics to third-party analytics solutions. The solution provides the following:

• Delivers operational guidance by offering analytics-based early warning signals and visualizations to engineers, corporates, and operators, connected directly to internal subject matter expertise
• Enables manufacturers to take fast, decisive, and consistent corrective action for process deviations
• Assists users in working through issues based on a straightforward yes-or-no approach, videos, or other documents, allowing them to maintain consistency between shifts and plans and the way users deal with particular issues

According to Sankara Narayanan, an industry  principal at Frost & Sullivan, “NWA provides a comprehensive range of univariate, multivariate, and statistical process control-charting capabilities, including stability analytics, to streamline problem solving. This is achieved through the NWA Quality Analyst® component of the NWA Analytics Knowledge Suite.”

NWA KnowledgeBase™ enables manufacturers to pass on stored knowledge and best practices seamlessly to new employees through real-time analytics and an immediately accessible knowledge database. The solution is valuable when an operator cannot resolve an issue, even after adhering to standard procedures. Speed, accuracy, and consistency in process-related decision making can save manufacturers time and money, to achieve better performance. The company’s analytics solutions provide customers with transformational business value and provides both NWA and its customers with a competitive edge. NWA provides manufacturers with a highly scalable analytics foundation that drives digital transformation and helps leading manufacturing enterprises deliver on the promise of Industry 4.0 solutions.

“NWA Analytics Knowledge Suite accelerates time to problem discovery and issue resolution. New employees can immediately access existing process knowledge and best practices to streamline problem solving, ensuring that similar issues can be prevented or resolved quickly in the future,” said Sankara Narayanan.

NWA capitalizes on institutional knowledge, solves challenges, delivers operational excellence, and accelerates digital transformation, redefining the future of manufacturing knowledge. With its strong overall performance, NWA earns Frost & Sullivan’s 2022 North American Technology Innovation Leadership Award in manufacturing analytics in the Industry 4.0 and digital transformation market.

Each year, Frost & Sullivan presents this award to the company that has developed a product with innovative features and functionality that is gaining rapid acceptance in the market. The award recognizes the quality of the solution and the customer value enhancements it enables.

“We appreciate the continued recognition of Northwest Analytics’ industry leadership, and our ability to enable manufacturers to push the boundaries of what is possible related to digital transformation. The NWA Analytics Knowledge Suite is key to manufacturers efforts to identify, codify and amplify their (process) analytics-based knowledge to increase efficiencies, stem institutional knowledge loss, and accelerate new employee productivity” stated Peter Guilfoyle, President and CEO of Northwest Analytics.

Frost & Sullivan Best Practices Awards recognize companies in various regional and global markets for demonstrating outstanding achievement and superior performance in leadership, technological innovation, customer service, and strategic product development. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, analyses, and extensive secondary research to identify best practices in the industry.